June 2011 Trail Dispatch

Celebrate National Trails Day this year by joining chapter members on a visit to Straight Lake State Park, and a 3.7 mile hike on one of the outstanding new segments of the Ice Age Trail.

The chapter hike-mobile will depart from McDonald's in Lake Hallie (on Hwy 124/OO, across from Wal-Mart) at 8 AM. We'll put together our car pooling there. A flag stop at New Auburn will offer another chance to join on at 8:30 AM. We'll arrive at the park at around 9:45 or 10, and after some shuttling we'll be off on our exploration of this exciting segment of the IAT.

Bring a lunch, because we'll find a spot for a picnic, possibly on the shore of Straight Lake itself, where there's all kinds of neat stuff going on.

To help us manage car pooling, please register for this event by sending an email to chapter@iatchippewa.org. We hope to see you on June 4.

If your interests lie more in trail building than in hiking, you may wish to skip the hike and instead sign up for the Mobile Skills project which will be going on elsewhere on the trail in Straight Lake Park the same weekend. For information, check the MSC calendar.

Trail Cleanup Opportunity, Saturday, June 18

Some pretty serious winds have wreaked havoc on the trail, in case you haven't been out for a few weeks. In fact, JoAnn Parks and Sue Bauer report 25 chain-saw ready trees blocking the trail between Hwy CC and 245th Ave alone.

So we'll visit these sections of heavily impacted trail and remove as much of the downed material as we can at our Trail Improvement Day on Saturday, June 18.

Rather than meeting at the Visitor Center, please go directly to the Ice Age Trailhead Parking area on Hwy CC, 2 miles north of Cornell/Hwy 64. We'll meet at 9:30 AM. Bring a lunch, water, insect repellant, and work gloves.

If you've been intrigued by the the idea of building the Ice Age Trail and helping it move to completion, then it is time for you to consider attending Ice Age Trail University! This annual event provides the nuts and bolts of trail construction, crew leadership, safety, first aid, CPR, care and feeding of volunteer crews, chain saw training, and more. All meals are provided for free as well as your place to camp.

This year's edition of IAT-U will be on June 22-26 at Dells of the Eau Claire County Park, northeast of Wausau.

There's an application required for either crew leader/skills training participation or chain saw training. For more information, as well as the applications, check the Mobile Skills calendar.

UW-EC Fraternity Helps Rebuild Trail Segment

It started and ended wet, but in the end 6 members of UW-EC’s Delta Sigma Phi fraternity worked along with our chapter volunteers to restore a section of trail that had been pretty badly roughed up as a result of some logging last fall. While building tread almost from scratch was new to the students, it was not the sort of thing chapter volunteers have had much practice with, either. Fortunately, some of the MSC magic has rubbed off on some of our volunteers, and we were able to appear skilled and knowledgeable in teaching trail building.

While we were anxious to get to our work area and ignore some recent windstorm damage along the way, one particularly massive downed pine tree that blocked the trail forced us to break out the saws and tackle the fallen behemoth. Once we got to our work area, we divided into two groups to work on the two separate sections. Our lunch was on the Mud Brook bridge, watching geese defend their territory, and by day's end each group had inspected the other's work and judged their own superior.

By quitting time, we'd pretty much rebuilt the worst of the damaged trail. Our hike out was highlighted by a porcupine who put on a show for all, a visit to the nearby heron rookery, and the traditional photo-stop on the huge erratic.

It was great fun for all of us, and we thank the young men of Delta Sigma Phi for their superb help with rebuilding the trail. See the story and photos.

You've received this message either because you are a member of the Ice Age Trail Alliance, have requested Ice Age Trail information, or have otherwise provided your address to IATA.

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